Romans 11:11-12

“ I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? Let it not be! But by their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. Now, if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more will be their fulness! ”

The then indicates that this new question is occasioned by the preceding development: “A portion have been hardened; is it then forever?” The question with μή anticipates a negative answer. According to many commentators, the two terms stumble and fall have almost the same meaning, and they make the question signify: “have they fallen solely for the end of falling?” But this meaning would have required the adverb μόνον, only, and it is contrary besides, to the difference of meaning between the two verbs; πταίειν, to stumble, expresses the shock against an obstacle; πίπτειν, to fall, the fall which follows from it. Consequently the meaning can only be this: “Have they stumbled so as to leave forever their position as God's people, and to remain as it were lying on the ground (plunged in perdition)?” Comp. the figures of striking against, Romans 9:32, and stumbling, Romans 11:9. “No,” answers the apostle, “God has very different views. This dispensation tends to a first proximate aim, namely, to open to the Gentiles the gateway of salvation.” According to Reuss, the apostle means to say, God “has for the present hardened the Jews that the gospel might be carried to the Gentiles.” If by this the author means anew to ascribe to St. Paul the idea of the unconditional decree in virtue of which God disposes of men independently of their moral liberty, he completely mistakes the apostle's thought. It is through the fault of Israel that it has been impossible for the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles to be carried out except by God's breaking with the chosen people. If, indeed, this people had lent themselves with intelligence and love to God's purpose toward the rest of mankind, they would willingly have let fall their theocratic pretensions; and, substituting the righteousness of faith for that of the law, they would themselves have become God's instruments in offering to the Gentiles the grace they enjoyed. But as their national pride did not permit them to enter on this path, and as they wished at any cost to maintain their legal system, God was obliged to blind them, so that they should not in Jesus recognize their Messiah. Otherwise the gospel would have been Judaized; believing Gentiles would have required to become the proselytes of Israel, and this would have been an end of salvation for the world, and of the world for salvation. Moreover, in consequence of the proud contempt of the Jews for the Gentiles, there would have been formed between them and the latter such a relation of enmity, that if Christianity offered itself to the world under cover of this detested Judaism, it would, no doubt, have gained some adherents, but it would have been the object of the antipathy which the Gentile world felt to the Jewish people. In these circumstances, God, who wished the salvation of the world, necessarily required to disentangle the cause of the gospel from that of Judaism, and even to oppose them to one another. And this is what was brought about by the refusal of Israel to recognize Jesus as the Messiah. The preaching of the Christ, delivered by this very separation, was able, free from all hindrance, to take its flight over the world. Once, then, Israel had become by their own fault what they were, God could evidently not act otherwise, if He would save the Gentiles; but nothing forced Israel to become such. There is nothing here, therefore, of an unconditional decree; it is ever the same law we meet with: God's plan embracing the vagaries of human liberty, and making them turn to its own fulfilment.

But that is not all. Wonderful result! Israel, having been unwilling to concur with God in saving the Gentiles, must end by being themselves saved through their salvation. It is undoubtedly a humiliation for them to be the last to enter where they should have introduced all others; but on God's part it is the height of mercy. Here is the more remote end (for which the conversion of the Gentiles becomes a means), which Paul indicates in the words borrowed from the passage of Moses quoted above, Romans 10:19: “ to provoke them to jealousy. ” Seeing all the blessings of the kingdom, pardon, justification, the Holy Spirit, adoption, shed down abundantly on the Gentile nations through faith in Him whom they have rejected, how can they help saying at length: These blessings are ours? And how can they help opening their eyes and recognizing that Jesus is the Messiah, since in Him the works predicted of the Messiah are accomplished? How shall the elder son, seeing his younger brother seated and celebrating the feast at his father's table, fail to ask that he may re-enter the paternal home and come to sit down side by side with his brother, after throwing himself into the arms of their common father? Such is the spectacle of which Paul gives us a glimpse in the words: to provoke them to jealousy. The sin of the Jews could modify the execution of God's plan, but by no means prevent it.